Independence Day

T 

The first full week of summer vacation is over, and our deprived children only got to go swimming four times--once at Cozy Beach, twice at Sunnyside Farm (the estate of Anne and Guido Calabresi), and once, yesterday, at the Yale Outdoor Education Center (YOEC) in East Lyme, CT.  In other words, we celebrated the Fourth of July with a vengeance.

Yesterday at the YOEC, I took the girls out for a ride on a rowboat.  The ride was notable for at least three reasons:

1.  Within minutes my namby-pamby, hyper-delicate, office-worker's hands were chafed raw by the wooden oars, and my thumbs were nearly bleeding.  What a wimp.

2.  Julia asked, a couple minutes into the ride, whether I was a good rower.  "I am a terrible rower," I answered.  Katharine agreed.  Every few minutes she started to giggle and remarked in amazement, "You're right Daddy!  You are a terrible rower!"

3.  Julia asked, a couple minutes later, whether it was hard to row the boat.  I answered that, for me, it was.  Then she asked whether it would it be hard for her to row it.  "It would be impossible for you to row it," I muttered.  "The oars are just too heavy."  Julia was very understanding, and opined that she'd be able to row it when she was grown up.  Katharine, in an inegalitarian fit of political incorrectness, retorted that, "Even when you are grown up, Julia, you will be a woman--not a man!!!"  "Women can do anything," I reproached her.  "Yeah, Katharine," confirmed Eli.  "Women can give birth!"  And so they can.